


sickly kitten of the human shape

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: (even if i could) make a deal with god [your blue-eyed boys related short-fic] [68]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alt-POV, Bucky takes care of people, C-PTSD, Caretaking, Community - Freeform, Disabled Character, Illness, Mentally Ill Character, Mercedes and her not!uncles, Neighbours, Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Steve used to get sick a lot, original female character of colour - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 10:23:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3443636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roughly ten minutes after he tells her to wait until the cat jumps off before she leaves, the kid's asleep with her head against the back of the couch, mouth open to breathe because her nose is stuffed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sickly kitten of the human shape

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of [**this series**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/132585), which is for short-fic associated with my fic [**your blue-eyed boys**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/107477), because I needed somewhere to stash it. 
> 
> Alt-povs slash missing scenes for "sick sad (humanoid) kitten".

Roughly ten minutes after he tells her to wait until the cat jumps off before she leaves, the kid's asleep with her head against the back of the couch, mouth open to breathe because her nose is stuffed. 

Bucky sighs, leans back against the counter, reaches over to turn off the audiobook he put on mostly for the noise, and rubs his forehead. 

She looks, not to put too fine a point on it, like shit. There's a dull grey tinge to her skin that's more or less the equivalent of Steve's more familiar (to him) _white-as-a-sheet_ , her eyes had been dull when they were open, and she's got the tight huddle of the genuinely miserable written in every line. And when she coughs, she sounds like someone's hitting the wall with a bag of marbles. 

Like right now. The sheer crackling percussiveness of it makes him suppress a wince. 

At least she's apparently one of those people who can cough without waking themselves up - being the other way always made Steve's _anything_ six or seven times worse than it already was. Still asleep, Mercedes just curls up into a slightly smaller ball, huddling down on the couch and reflexively swallowing. 

The coughing makes the kitten jump down off her lap and mew faintly, sniffing around. Bucky reaches over and drums the fingers of his left hand on the counter a couple times and she comes trotting towards him, jumping up on the high stool and then onto the counter to demand he pet her. Bucky does a few times, absent, frowning. Then he gives up, sighs again and pulls his phone out of his pocket. 

Texts Steve with, _stop at a pharmacy or something on your way home and grab something for stuffed up nose, fever and cough, will you?_

Admittedly, he doesn't _know_ she's got a fever, but he's pretty damn sure she does, and when the kitten gets distracted by the prospect of a food bowl, Bucky crosses the room, leans over the back of the couch and lightly touches the inside of his wrist to her forehead to prove himself right. Whatever she took at home's probably still working, because it's not over a hundred, but she's definitely pushing it and he sighs again. 

"You don't have a cold, kiddo," he says, very quietly, and drapes the blanket from the back of the couch over her up to her shoulders. After a beat's worth of thought, he pulls it back enough to carefully lift _her_ phone out of the front pocket of her sweater, and then covers her back up. 

His phone vibrates against the counter and he goes back to it to see Steve answering first _okay_ and then in a second text, _why exactly?_

 _because there's a kid with the flu and an empty place asleep on the couch_ , Bucky texts back, and puts the phone back in his pocket. 

Mercedes' phone doesn't have a code to unlock, which saves him some trouble, and he flicks through her texts to find her mother's cell number so he can call it. He doesn't expect her to pick up, being on shift, and she doesn't: instead he waits and leaves a message.

_Clara_ (because the last time they'd spoken she insisted) _this is James from upstairs. I'm calling you on your daughter's phone because she's asleep on my couch with a fever. She's fine here, but when she told you she had a cold she was either playing it down or didn't realize she's definitely got the flu, and I'm not really comfortable with her being at home alone._

He tells her she can call back on her daughters phone; then - after a half-second hesitation - he gives her his number, too. Then he hangs up, flicks the side of Mercedes' phone to silent so the ringer doesn't accidentally give him an adrenaline high he doesn't need, and leaves it on the counter. 

That's as far as he gets, for a bit. Just sort of stalls out there, staring ahead of himself into the middle distance, both hands bracing him against the counter. And he's acutely aware, again, of how the right hand gives against the edge and the left doesn't, the milimetre's increase to the imbalance between either side. 

He's not ready for this. 

It doesn't matter, probably hasn't actually mattered since she mouthed off up on the roof instead of panicking, definitely hasn't mattered since (high on the feeling of _something_ changing, getting better, without falling apart right afterwards) he'd managed to drag himself through the trip to DC. Some part of him doesn't give a shit that he's not ready, or that so much of the rest of him's going to fucking lose it and never has had much of "it" to lose to start with. But he's managed to ignore that, edge around it, not pay attention and not have to think about it, till now. 

He's not read for this. 

People are a snarl, _people_ don't . . . work. For most of them he has to deal with he can find . . . spaces, shapes where the behavioural equivalent of muscle-memory fills shit in, at least how to think and at least until his slashed up clusterfuck of a brain runs down. Comrades, problems, even Elizabeth he can fit in over a decade's worth of space hollowed out for Steve's mom and maybe it's a ridiculous pedestal but it's there and he can deal with it. Sort of. As much as he can deal with anything. It's . . . rote, they're all on the other side of a mask and he doesn't have to - he doesn't even know. 

(There are words for it. A fuck of a lot of them, actually, from vulgar to academic and he knows all of them - but if he's not careful with them, even thinking them, things can get . . . fucked.) 

But those are acts he knows, a kind of _people_ that he can sort the fuck out. 

This, the kid, is . . . something else. Something he can't, something _that_ can't be fucking "sorted". He's not ready for it, doesn't know if he ever would be, doesn't know if there's enough . . . _left_ for him to be _capable_ of it.

He's probably a fucking idiot for letting it come this far. It just . . . doesn't matter: here it is. 

He leaves one of the smaller lamps in the living-room lit, and the under-counter lights in the kitchen; flicks the rest of them off. He doesn't need them and he'd like the kid to sleep for as long as she's capable. He inverts the contrast on the tablet, pulls up the Tolstoy he's reading on the basis of why-the-fuck-not and sits on the further end of the futon, half-turned so he can keep an eye on the kid. 

If he had the energy, he'd hate the fucking flu, just on principle. And this year's strain is apparently really fucking nasty, landing just about everyone in the Tower except Banner in bed for a week (Barton for two, to his intense disgust, which meant just about everyone got to hear at least one snarling hacking complaint about why-did-he-come-back-to-New-York-anyway) even in spite of anti-virals, and the fuzzy memory of the one year Steve'd managed to get a fever so high he'd seized is more than enough. He wants to be able to see her. 

After a few minutes the kitten jumps up and insists on sprawling over his lap even though he's not really sitting the right way to give her one and she's more or less in the way of the tablet. He rolls his eyes at her, shifts position and re-settles her in the corner made by his hip and the back of the futon, where she settles down to purr. 

 

Steve gets home before Clara Sandoval calls, opening the door carefully and shutting it quietly. He puts the little box of cold drugs on the sideboard near the door and looks at the kid still asleep on the couch, now huddled down until her head's mostly resting on the arm. "She looks pretty awful," he observes in a murmur, as Bucky puts down the tablet. 

"And she's been asleep a couple hours," he replies, a bit wry, "so she looks better than when she showed up. How was _Star Wars_?" he asks, letting wry turn sardonic as Steve smiles slightly, shakes his head and shrugs off his coat. 

"Probably would've been better if I'd seen it for the first time when I was seventeen," he says, "or if I had some other reason to catch all the nostalgia everyone else seems to have about it, but it was a good time. Tolstoy?" he tosses back, mock-serious, and Bucky snorts. 

"Russian," he replies. "Unbelievably Russian." When Steve suppresses a grin and heads for the kitchen Bucky adds, raising his voice just enough to be heard but not enough to disturb the kid, "If you're putting coffee on toss more ginger in the other pot. She's been coughing more, so I think her last dose of whatever is starting to run out." He pauses and adds, "What the Hell is in cold medicine anyway?" 

"Pseudoephedrine, dextromethorphan hydrobromide, guaifenesin, doxylamine succinate and acetaminophen," Steve rattles off like he recently heard someone rattle off the polysyllables himself, after a pause full of the sound of making coffee and cutting up pieces of ginger. "Decongestant, cough suppressant, expectorant, antihistamine and sleep aid, and finally," he finishes, taking a breath for dramatic effect, "analgesic and antipyretic. Apparently only pharmacists are allowed to give you anything with pseudoephedrine in it," he notes. "I had to solemnly swear I was not going to make methamphetamine." 

"Ten bucks says the bottom of your Visa slip ended up in the pharmacist's wallet or purse," Bucky says, absently. 

"No bet," Steve replies, and goes back to the kitchen. 

The condo starts to smell of ginger and fresh coffee again. 

The kid's phone buzzes a few minutes later, and Bucky lets Steve pick it up and explain that Mercedes is here, she's fine here, she's fine here as long as Clara Sandoval needs to have her here and yes that includes a few hours for a really ridiculous pile-up crash and the traffic it's backed up everywhere even at this hour of the night. 

Bucky gets up to pour himself some coffee and the kitten decides if he's going to be uncooperative and mean and keep _moving_ , she's going to go sit on the human hot water bottle anyway and settles herself sort of back into Mercedes' lap, kneading at the girl's sweater and purring again.

He pours a cup of coffee for Steve, too, as Steve hangs up; Steve takes it and says, "That was the voice of a woman who's going to hug you when she shows up unless you stop her. Jaime's going to stay at his aunt's," he adds. "I get the feeling the aunt's just happy to be able to help at all." 

Mercedes is curling herself into a tighter ball, cat on her lap or no, and Bucky feels himself frowning, only part of him paying attention to what Steve said. "She is," he replies, with that part. "She feels guilty for not being around before her step-brother died, or keeping him from dying." 

Steve gives him an amused, knowing look that says _I'm not gonna ask how you know that_ ; Bucky counters it with one that says _because you already know the answer_ , and Steve acknowledges that with a slight movement of his mug. Then he looks thoughtful for a minute or two and asks, "You okay?" in a voice that says asking is mostly about him not actually going to let the underlying shit here go unsaid. Or, if unsaid, not unacknowledged.

Bucky's response is moving his right hand dismissively, mug still in it - it's the only answer he _has_ , because he doesn't fucking know. Steve nods a little. 

Then he says, "You know, right in this moment, I gotta say I really _appreciate_ the fact that I _personally_ will never have to go through a bout of influenza ever again," and Bucky has to snort a laugh.

******

Mercedes wakes up coughing, disoriented, and a little bit upset anyone's fussing over her. The sheer familiarity of that means Steve gets hit by a genuine pang of fellow-feeling: God knows he did that often enough. At about her age, too.

The kitten makes a noise of discomfort and resettles herself as Mercedes sits up; and by the time she finishes sitting up she's coughing up any and all of the gunk she hadn't managed to cough up while she was asleep, which Steve figures is quite a bit. 

He's already looked at the dosage and popped the capsules out of their foil packaging, as well as pouring out a glass of water; now, while she coughs, Steve a fills a mug with the turmeric stuff keeping warm on the stove and takes it, the water and the capsules over to hand it to her. She frowns at the water and the capsules, when she's done, but then she's looking around in guilty distress and before Steve can say anything she says (or mostly croaks), "Fu - I mean, I'm sorry! I should go home - " 

It actually takes some effort for Steve not to laugh, but he makes it. Because he's not laughing at her exactly, and the joke is old and complicated. But Bucky cuts her off flat, says, "Your fever's 104, kiddo. You're not going anywhere until your mom gets here." 

The tone's so familiar and so displaced in time that Steve ends up blinking at him, eyebrows both rising. Bucky glances back, and flicks the fingers of his left hand up from folded arms, glancing upwards, acknowledging what Steve's reacting to without having anything to say about it. And Steve puts that reaction aside, it and the disorienting feeling of too many years and a completely different life, and makes himself pay attention to the kid on the couch instead. 

(As to the fever, it's not like they could take her temperature but about five minutes ago Bucky did test wrist-to-forehead and mutter some profanity about it being high, so Steve figures that's probably about right. God knows he had enough practice.) 

Mercedes looks like she's almost about to cry; she says, " _No_ , Mom's staying at Aunt _Colleen's_ , I told her I'm sick I don't wanna get Jaime sick -" and while she says it, getting less coherent and more like she's going to cry as she goes, she tries to stand up, dumps the kitten (who thankfully doesn't decide to use claws to hold on) on the floor and falls over, so that Steve has to quickly put the water down and catch her arm to keep her from ending up sprawled on the floor and maybe hitting her head on something. 

He helps her sit back down on the couch. Bucky doesn't move, just watches them both with an expression complicated enough even Steve's going to wait until later to sort it out; his voice is a little less flat and has a little more sigh in it when he says, "No, kiddo. Your _brother's_ staying at your aunt's and your mom's coming back to get _you_. Some idiot got into a three-car pileup so she's gonna be a while, so _take the damn medicine_ and _stop_ trying to fall over and give yourself a concussion."

Steve gives him another eyebrow-up look - though to be fair this one he knows is kind of amused, too, because it is actually kind of funny, at least watching from the outside. Mercedes just blinks at Bucky for a second, the words obviously having to fight through mucous to get to her brain. 

This time when Steve offers her the medicine and the water she takes both and swallows the capsules; then she takes the tincture. She looks at it and then sips it almost mechanically, like she's trying to think of how to argue and can't figure it out and in the meantime her body's going with the last orders it heard. 

And then she's drinking it like she's gone on autopilot, like while she was trying to think up an argument her thoughts got lost and wound down; she sits back against the couch-cushions, looking tired and wan. 

Bucky's still standing halfway between the couch and the kitchen, hand briefly covering his eyes before he exhales, meets Steve's gaze, gives what really amounts to a helpless shrug, all things considered, and then shakes his head at the girl who's probably just about ready to fall asleep where she's sitting again. 

Steve puts the water-glass in the sink, comes out of the kitchen around the other side and stops a couple steps back, leaning one hip against the counter. Before he can think of exactly what to say, Bucky's muttering something Steve can't quite catch but is willing to bet is a curse, as he pinches the bridge of his nose. 

Then Bucky drops his hand, exhales and says, "She's not staying on the fucking couch. We can put her in my room." 

And all Steve says is, "Sounds good," because he's _not_ going to say a damn thing about either Bucky calling the room 'his' _or_ deciding Mercedes can sleep there, and definitely not about him doing both in the same breath. Not now and maybe not for a Hell of a long time. 

This time when he glances at the girl the word Bucky says under his breath is definitely _Christ_ , in the sharp-edged tone that's accusation, condemnation and supplication all in one note, before he sighs and crosses to the couch. 

Steve watches as Bucky takes the cup out of the girl's hands, and then as he scoops her up, one arm under her bent legs and the other around her back, under her arms. She looks startled, but it's the startled that comes from too-fevered and too-tired and apparently as far as instinct goes hers is to help by putting her arms around Bucky's neck. 

Not that it makes much difference. She can't weigh more than a hundred and twenty pounds at the furthest end of the heaviest possible bones and highest muscle-weight for her size, which might as well be nothing. 

Steve follows as far as the door to the bedroom, gets Bucky to stop by touching his shoulder; Steve ducks in first so he can pull the comforter back and put the pillow down for sleep instead of decoration. Then he steps back and watches Bucky carefully put her down and pull the comforter back over her. 

It's not jealousy. Genuinely. Actually that surprises the life out of him, to be honest: Steve's been half-expecting jealousy, childish and automatic, ready to irritably smack it when it finally rears its head. But if the thing that settles in his chest has some of the same shape it's got none of the resentment, a lot more affection, and it's a _Hell_ of a lot more complicated. 

He doesn't know what to call it. He wonders if there's even a name. 

"Just shut up and go to sleep, kitten," Bucky says, and Steve's honestly been waiting for that little slip for a while now. "You're not the first person to get the flu." 

And Steve can't help smiling or saying, "Now that sounds familiar," and isn't surprised when he gets a mock-dire look. 

"Shut up, Steve," Bucky says, and gives him a gentle shove out of the room into the hallway. And in the hallway Bucky adds, quietly and in a voice that's pretending to be mock-growling threat and really, really isn't, "Don't say a God-damn thing ab - " 

"I'm not saying _anything_ ," Steve tells him, because he's not; if he's been waiting for that slip, he has no intention of doing anything to make it more difficult or potentially painful than noticing it already has to be, especially since Bucky clearly knows he did it and what he did. 

Because Bucky may have been an only child, but his aunts and uncles on both sides had kids just about in litters, and Bucky's grandmother had always called all the little girls _kitten_. 

And because the old lady'd done it, so had everyone else. 

Steve reaches over to catch hold of the side of Bucky's shirt. The tug is more an invitation than any real attempt at pulling Bucky over, but Bucky takes it. So Steve leans back against the wall and pulls Bucky in to him. 

Actually it surprises him how willing Bucky is to let him do that, and how willing he is to rest his forehead against Steve's shoulder. Steve raises one hand to the back of Bucky's skull, down close to his neck, and lets the other one fall to Bucky's waist, slipping under the hem of his shirt and then just letting it rest. 

And when it comes to emotions that may or may not have names, he kind of suspects at least ten of them are going for Bucky's throat right now, and whether or not any of them are actually bad in and of themselves, there's more of them than anyone should have to deal with and they come with a lot more pain in their baggage. 

Not to mention the burn equivalent to something demanding the movement of injured muscles almost never moved since, because they weren't ready then and might not be now, but the world doesn't actually wait for you to check in before it throws life at you. 

And when Bucky breathes, " _Fuck_ , Steve, you should really just shoot me," in the way that means he just can't figure out any other way to let the pressure out of his head, Steve considers that suspicion pretty much confirmed. 

"I'm pretty sure the kid would dedicate her whole life to trapping me somewhere and blowing me up if I did," he replies, sort of lightly and sort of not, because he's not sure that's actually a joke. "I mean, if you think about it she'd make a fantastic nemesis." 

Bucky laughs, a little and more than a little ragged and Steve nudges his head up so he can kiss Bucky's forehead. 

 

Clara Sandoval shows up around two in the morning, looking frazzled and exhausted until she's actually waking her daughter up and then mostly just looking determined and set. By then Mercedes has woken up twice, although the first one she likely won't recall and probably didn't really count as "waking", being as she could barely walk properly and got confused as to why the bathroom wasn't in the right place. The second time she'd taken more of the medicine and it's still working when her mother arrives. 

Apparently the new, strange adult is enough to keep Abrikoska from trying to escape to the hall this time, and she stays back, lurking in the kitchen. Steve smiles and gives Clara the rest of the cold meds (saying, "Don't worry about it - trust me, it was nothing, and they'll just go to waste here.") and Bucky catches Mercedes' arm as she wobbles a bit. 

Her face looks like she's trying to feel guilty but she's just too sick; she says, "Sorry," and Bucky shakes his head and reaches over to muss her hair a little. 

"Go home and go to sleep," he says. "All things considered I'd rather you weren't sitting in an apartment with a fever of a hundred and four by yourself, kitten."

Steve knows she has no idea how much he means that, but that's alright. It'd be a bit much to load on a fourteen year old kid, anyway. 

Clara Sandoval does hug him, and if Bucky can't help tensing at it he does let her, and waves off her brief but intense _thank you so much_ with a half smile. 

Steve decides not to wait longer than it takes the door to click closed to step closer and behind, and rest a hand on each of Bucky's shoulders. Knows it was the right decision as he feels and watches them go back down from the wire-tense that happens when other people touch him. 

The kitten comes over to rub against their legs and complain, clearly feeling that the interruption to nightly routine has all been extremely off-putting. Bucky reaches across with his right hand to pull Steve's left arm across the front of his shoulders and Steve takes the hint and wraps the other one around underneath it. 

Kitten's opinions not withstanding, they stay like that for a minute or two. Until Bucky's unwound enough that it wouldn't take knowing him the way Steve does to know he's not stiff and tense against the hug, against being touched, and Bucky's breathing's closer to normal. 

Then Bucky takes a deeper breath and manages, very carefully, to say, "You should tell me about the stupid movies. I think I need another cup of coffee before I can sleep."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Flu](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7776319) by [danceswchopstck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/danceswchopstck/pseuds/danceswchopstck)




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